Security Systems News - Moorehttp://securitysystemsnews.com/taxonomy/term/6317
enExperts: Schools can prepare successfully for disasters like tornadoeshttp://securitysystemsnews.com/article/experts-schools-can-prepare-successfully-disasters-tornadoes
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<div class="field-item even">Designated shelter, alignment with emergency management offices also key</div>
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<div class="field-item even" property="schema:datePublished dc:date"><span class="date-display-single" property="schema:datePublished dc:date" datatype="xsd:dateTime" content="2013-05-22T00:00:00-04:00">05/22/2013</span></div>
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<div class="field-item even" rel="schema:author dc:creator">Amy Canfield</div>
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<div class="field-item even" property="schema:articleBody content:encoded"> <p>YARMOUTH, Maine—What can a school do when a monstrous EF5 tornado is barreling down upon it, packing winds of at least 200 mph? Follow through on what should already have been practiced many times, school security experts say.</p>
<p>Monday’s huge tornado in Moore, Okla., struck two schools. It pulled off the roof of Plaza Towers Elementary, where classes were still in session, and knocked down its cinder-block walls. News reports Tuesday afternoon said seven students died there as a result. Briarwood Elementary also was demolished, but it appeared Tuesday that everyone there was rescued.</p>
<p>“The reality is that schools that are located in Tornado Alley are much better prepared because they know the history and the annual threats. They treat drills and planning more seriously than perhaps schools in Cleveland or Chicago,” Kenneth S. Trump, president of National School Safety and Security Services, told <em>Security Director News.</em></p>
<p>Trump’s consulting firm, based in Cleveland, specializes in school security and emergency preparedness training.</p>
<p>“So the good news is they’re much better prepared, but the bad news is that while we strive for 100 percent perfection, it wouldn’t be called a disaster if we had that perfection,” he said. “It doesn’t minimize the losses, but the scenarios could be a lot worse.”</p>
<p>Paul Timm, president of RETA Security, an Illinois-based school security consultancy firm, said schools often think they are well prepared when they’re not.</p>
<p>“They used to put kids in the hallways during a tornado,” he said. But footage taken from schools in Joplin, Mo., where a deadly tornado also rated as EF5—the highest on the Enhanced Fujita Tornado Intensity Scale—struck in 2011, showed that the halls “became wind tunnels. The exterior doors flew open and there were car bumpers and farm equipment flying through.” Fortunately, school was not in session.</p>
<p>Both Trump and Timm noted that they did not know the details of the Moore schools’ preparedness plans and were speaking generally. Moore Superintendent Susan Pierce said in news reports Tuesday that every Moore school implemented its tornado shelter plan before the storm hit town.</p>
<p>Schools need to designate tornado shelters and label them, both with signs and on their evacuation plans. If a school doesn’t have a basement, then it should look at restrooms and locker rooms. If those aren’t roomy enough to contain all the students and staff, schools should next look for interior rooms that don’t have windows, Timm advised.</p>
<p>“They need to reinforce door hardware. That’s been available for years, but schools are just not aware of it,” he said.</p>
<p>Schools are busy with active-shooter drills, fire drills and lockdown drills, but a tornado “is so much more likely,” he said, noting that Illinois averages 54 per year. There are plenty of resources out there for schools, including free video training online that can help them get started, he said.</p>
<p>After the 1999 Columbine school shooting and even since the more recent Newtown tragedy, schools have done a good job working with local law enforcement agencies and fire departments about security and safety issues, but not so much with local emergency management offices, Trump said. They need to do so, he said.</p>
<p>“Most schools are not designed for safety, even the newer ones,” he said. School officials should work with emergency management offices, the Red Cross, first responders and other safety organizations and “get out in the weeds” and see what they need for physical safety that can be incorporated into the design of the building, especially in high-risk areas.</p>
<p>School officials also should know how to turn their school into an emergency shelter if needed, he said. “One of the things we often find with a wave of new principals is that they don’t even know their building is designated as an official community shelter,” he said.</p> </div>
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<span property="dc:title" content="Experts: Schools can prepare successfully for disasters like tornadoes" class="rdf-meta element-hidden"></span>Wed, 22 May 2013 17:33:08 +0000Leif Kothe16449 at http://securitysystemsnews.comhttp://securitysystemsnews.com/article/experts-schools-can-prepare-successfully-disasters-tornadoes#commentsPost tornado, ASG employees tout 2GIG severe weather alerthttp://securitysystemsnews.com/blog/post-tornado-asg-employees-tout-2gig-severe-weather-alert
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<div class="field-item even" property="schema:author dc:creator">Martha Entwistle</div>
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<div class="field-item even" property="schema:datePublished dc:created"><span class="date-display-single" property="schema:datePublished dc:created" datatype="xsd:dateTime" content="2013-05-22T00:00:00-04:00">05/22/2013</span></div>
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<div class="field-item even" property="schema:articleBody content:encoded"> <p>Yesterday afternoon I spoke to some Oklahoma-based employees of super-regional security company ASG Security. Thankfully, all employees and employee families are safe, according to Bob Ryan and Ralph Masino of ASG, but many were witnesses to the destruction that occurred May 20.</p>
<p><img alt="" class="media-image" height="358" width="480" typeof="foaf:Image" src="http://securitysystemsnews.com/sites/ssn/files/styles/large/public/housesdestroyed_0.jpg?itok=aU2g2kIZ" /></p>
<p>All touted ASG Connect, ASG’s interactive home security panel which it OEMs from 2GIG. ASG provides the “Severe Weather Alert” service (powered by Alarm.com) to its Oklahoma customers free of charge, Ryan told me.</p>
<p>Bobby Walker, sales manager in ASG’s Oklahoma City office, lives in Moore. On Monday afternoon, he saw that the storm was bearing down and went to retrieve his son from school, which is located two miles away from the Plaza Towers Elementary School where several children died in the tornado.</p>
<p>“When I got there, they said they were not checking any more students out and we needed to take cover,” Walker said. “I found the room my son was in and we were told to take cover. … It was the scariest moment of my life. I was lying on top of my son and it sounded like canon balls were hitting the side of the building. Thuds, huge thuds and [sounds like] a jet engine firing up outside the building.”</p>
<p>The tornado passed in a matter of minutes, but when Walker and his son went outside, “it looked like a bomb dropped, houses were obliterated, every telephone pole was down. It was mass chaos,” he said.</p>
<p>Walker had two more children to retrieve. The road was impassable for cars and Walker’s car was totaled anyway, so he and his son walked the five miles to the school his other children attend.</p>
<p>There was no cell coverage and in neighborhoods along the way, “it was rubble propped up by more rubble.”</p>
<p>He feared the worst, but as he and his son got closer to the other school, there was less and less destruction. All of his children were fine, and his house, a few miles away was not seriously damaged. (Walker took the photos in this blog on his iPhone during his walk home.)</p>
<p>Walker and Joshua Jones, ASG VP and GM Oklahoma region, both said the 2GIG Severe Weather Alert was key to alerting many residents about the tornado.</p>
<p>Jones said his system alerted his wife to turn on the television. “She was home, but she wasn’t watching TV,” he said. Once she saw the severity of the storm, she called Jones and told him to retrieve their children from school.</p>
<p>“If you live in Oklahoma and you don’t have 2GIG with Severe Weather Alert, you need to rethink it,” Walker said.</p>
<p>“So many storms happen in the middle of the night, you never get the warning our 2GIG panel gives us. … it saves lives just like fire protection,” Walker said.</p>
<p>ASG has nearly 6,000 “2GIG protected customers in Oklahoma” and more than 2,000, 2Gig/ADC systems installed in the Oklahoma City/Moore, area, all of whom received a critical server weather alert on their 2Gig system, according to Bob Ryan.</p>
<p>For more tornado coverage, see “<a href="http://www.securitysystemsnews.com/article/oklahoma-integrator-high-tech-tronics-rides-out-storm">Oklahoma integrator High Tech Tronics rides out storm</a>”, <a href="http://www.securitysystemsnews.com/article/tornado-spares-csg-office-oklahoma-city">Tornado spares CSG Office in Oklahoma City</a>, and “Experts: Schools can prepare successfully for disasters like tornadoes”</p>
<p><img alt="" class="media-image" height="358" width="480" typeof="foaf:Image" src="http://securitysystemsnews.com/sites/ssn/files/styles/large/public/housedown.jpg?itok=5Ibml-xW" /></p>
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<p><img alt="" class="media-image" height="358" width="480" typeof="foaf:Image" src="http://securitysystemsnews.com/sites/ssn/files/styles/large/public/treedown.jpg?itok=GVZ_IbSK" /></p> </div>
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<span property="dc:title" content="Post tornado, ASG employees tout 2GIG severe weather alert" class="rdf-meta element-hidden"></span>Wed, 22 May 2013 17:04:43 +0000SSN Editor16448 at http://securitysystemsnews.comhttp://securitysystemsnews.com/blog/post-tornado-asg-employees-tout-2gig-severe-weather-alert#commentsTornado spares CSG office in Oklahoma Cityhttp://securitysystemsnews.com/article/tornado-spares-csg-office-oklahoma-city
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<div class="field-item even">Branch manager’s daughter, top-five dealer lose homes in storm</div>
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<div class="field-item even" property="schema:datePublished dc:date"><span class="date-display-single" property="schema:datePublished dc:date" datatype="xsd:dateTime" content="2013-05-21T00:00:00-04:00">05/21/2013</span></div>
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<div class="field-item even" rel="schema:author dc:creator">Rich Miller</div>
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<div class="field-item even" property="schema:articleBody content:encoded"> <p>TULSA, Okla.—Monday’s devastating tornado spared Central Security Group’s office in Oklahoma City, but the homes of the branch manager’s daughter and a CSG dealer were among the hundreds that were destroyed, CSG’s Glenn Albers told Security Systems News on Tuesday.</p>
<p>Albers, vice president of dealer operations for CSG, a full-service security provider based here, said the company was still attempting to contact all of its dealers in the area in the chaotic aftermath of the storm.</p>
<p>“There are some guys we haven’t heard from yet,” he said. Cellphone service was affected by the storm and “we’re monitoring social media to see if anyone is posting that they are OK.”</p>
<p>The Oklahoma City office was evacuated before the tornado and the building wasn’t damaged, Albers said. He received a text message Tuesday morning from branch manager Rick Hunter saying that all of the office’s employees had been accounted for and were unhurt.</p>
<p>Albers said the wife of a CSG employee was injured at one of the elementary schools hit by the tornado. The home of Hunter’s daughter “was completely leveled,” he said, “but everyone was out of town, so they were really lucky.”</p>
<p>CSG dealer Ryan Harvey, president of Security Options, also lost his home in the tornado.</p>
<p>“He’s a top-five [sales] guy for us, he’s a great guy, and it’s just like ‘wow,’” Albers said. “I heard about his house disappearing and he’s still just trying to figure out what’s going on.”</p>
<p>Albers said CSG has more than 2,000 accounts in the Oklahoma City suburbs of Moore, Shawnee and Newcastle, but “we’re not sure how many were hit at this point.” Moore and Newcastle were in the 20-mile path of destruction on Monday, while Shawnee was hit by a separate tornado on Sunday.</p>
<p>Experience with tornadoes in years past will help CSG handle the aftermath this time, Albers said.</p>
<p>“We’ve done this before,” he said. “I actually just got off the phone with the office in Tulsa to make sure we’re bending over backward to make sure customers know we’re going to do everything we can for them from a security standpoint. Contractually, we can put their accounts on hold. For a lot of people it will take six months or a year to rebuild, and we’ll just work with them to make sure they get what they need.”</p>
<p>The effects of the severe weather weren’t limited to Oklahoma. Albers was driving to Wichita, Kan., on Tuesday morning to check on CSG’s SecureNet monitoring facility, <a href="http://www.securitysystemsnews.com/article/csg-acquires-securenet">which was acquired</a> in a deal in March.</p>
<p>“There wasn’t a lot of coverage about it, but two days ago there was a tornado that touched down outside the airport in Wichita,” he said. “There’s no damage [to the central station] that I’m aware of, but I’m heading up to go over their processes and procedures. That’s something we’ve been working on, but it kind of brings a sense of urgency when all of this happens.”</p>
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<span property="dc:title" content="Tornado spares CSG office in Oklahoma City" class="rdf-meta element-hidden"></span>Tue, 21 May 2013 20:36:15 +0000Rich Miller16441 at http://securitysystemsnews.comhttp://securitysystemsnews.com/article/tornado-spares-csg-office-oklahoma-city#comments